At the end of May, the Combined Councils Waste Group (both past Murray and Riverina groups) met in Albury for their quarterly in person meeting. The group toured a local business Foamex, an Expanded Polystyrene manufacturing and recycling factory which makes housing waffle pods for in floor insulation. What is unique about this operation is that they will take back offcuts to re produce their product and can also include up to 35% of post consumer polystyrene in their pods production.
The group then met at the Albury Waste Management facility in the SMART education centre onsite, then toured the Albury facility. This facility is home to the 4th Largest landfill in NSW (largest out of Sydney metro) and accepts 200,000T of material annually. Of this amount, half is recovered through recycling process and a reuse shop.
A residential recycling, ‘push pit’ and re-use shop has been in operation for 10 years. In 2024 a Construction and Demolition (C&D) Material recycling facility was opened to sort timbers, rubble, hard plastics etc. This has increased diversion away from landfill of 5,000T annually.
There is approximately 2MW of renewable energy generated on site through landfill gas capture and solar farm.
The group continues to work collaboratively tackling regional and rural waste issues and is also supported by RAMJO’s Procurement Manager.
